The backstory of John; in 2012 he entered a competition—the City Index Trading Academy. The idea was to take a group of people with very little market experience to see how well they would perform as active traders, over the span of 5 weeks. John came out on top and won the £100,000 prize money which was up for grabs.

He’s of course continued trading ever since, and has developed into quite the trend/position trader—focused on US equities, making simplicity an absolute top priority. He’s also a black cab driver in London, which you’ll hear more about shortly.

In this episode we chat about; the competition, John’s trading methodology, why you must ‘stay out of your own way’ (as John puts it), and plenty more.

For Charlie Bathgate, trading has been a part of his life since as far back as he can remember—his father was an options market maker, and not to mention his brothers and sister work major-roles in the industry too.

Today, Charlie is a partner and the CEO of two operations; Sang Lucci and Flammarion. Sang Lucci being a provider of trader education, and Flammarion being a hedge fund (which mostly consists of automated traders).

We had an awesome chat, speaking about; his observations from working with and evaluating traders, why humility is key, and what it means to “own your strategy”. Also Charlie shares big insight from his obsession with psychology and biohacking, and how innovative technology being used by the NBA can benefit traders.

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This weeks guest preferred to remain somewhat anonymous, although his name is Rob – others know him as RG, and he’s a part of Discovery Trading Group.

Rob is an active futures traders and is what most people would call a pure scalper, but he refers to himself as a “street level gambler with an appetite for risk”. Either way, he is very short-term and often just trading for a couple ticks at a time. So that’s one side of what he does, the other side, Rob is also involved in a quantitative research firm which trades a whole range of strategies, over various timeframes, in many different markets.

Over the next 60 minutes; you’ll hear about Rob’s early years of trading during the 80’s, and how he’s developed into the trader he is today. Rob also drives home the importance of risk management, shares a few gambling analogies, and talks about the benefit of interacting with other traders on a regular basis.

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A big guest on the podcast this week—a man who for many won’t need any introduction, he is; Eric Scott Hunsader.

Eric started out as an algorithmic trader in the early 80’s, soon after became a self-taught programmer, and since then he’s written many software applications for financial data. But today, Eric is the founder of Nanex, a whole market streaming data feed, which transmits 20 billion data points every day.

Well-known for speaking out against the many issues that surround high frequency trading, Eric will tell you straight; HFT firms are stealing money, exchanges have rigged the market, and the regulators that allow this type of activity to continue are corrupt individuals.

Additionally we talk about quote stuffing, mini-flash crashes that occur on a daily basis, and why Eric recently received a $750,000 whistle-blower award from the SEC.